Workout for the brain

If what you want is an intense workout  for the brain then this website is for you. Memrise allows you to learn vocabulary, languages, history, science, and trivia by supplying few byte-size information and exercises for you to commit them to memory. The homepage directs you to make a choice from among the half a dozen courses offered. After you select what you want to learn, say intermediate French vocabulary, the website prompts you about the number of words you would like to memorise in one session. Once you set that and hit the start button, a fun interactive game begins. The auto selected words of the day are defined. You are then tested in various ways repeatedly — subsequent pages ask you to match the word to its meaning, identify the word by its meaning, fill in the blank etc, until the words are drilled into your memory, or at least they should be. At the end of a session, you earn points based upon the number of correct answers you gave, your speed and accuracy. The more points you earn raises your ranking in the Memrise community. The next page gives you a summary of what you learnt and also shows you where you rank among other users, whom you may even follow. The rankings grow from a beginner membryo to member and memdicant, to meminence, memperor and overlord on the upper end of the scale, with about 10 other cleverly named badges in between. Memrise’s objective is to make learning quick and effortless, and it delivers on its promise. Essentially a word learning game, it is most suitable for expanding your vocabulary/ proficiency in a subject you are familiar with. But if you are adventurous you may find yourself spouting some smart technical words, like Integumentary System, and fit in seamlessly at a conference for Biology PhD scholars, maybe.